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Manx phonology
Consonants The consonant phonemes of Manx are as follows:Thomson 1992, 128–29; Broderick 1993, 234 The voiceless plosives are pronounced with aspiration. The dental, postalveolar and palato-velar plosives are affricated to in many contexts. Manx has an optional process of lenition of plosives between vowels, whereby voiced plosives and voiceless fricatives become voiced fricatives and voiceless plosives become either voiced plosives or voiced fricatives. This process introduces the allophones to the series of voiced fricatives in Manx. The voiced fricative may be further lenited to , and may disappear altogether. Examples include:Broderick 1984–86, 3:3–13; Thomson 1992, 129 ;Voiceless plosive to voiced plosive * > : "flag, rag" * > : "sin" ;Voiceless plosive to voiced fricative * > : "cup" * > : "boat" * > : "tooth" ;Voiced plosive to voiced fricative * > : "horse" * > : "face" * > : "prayer" * > > : "stick" * > : "born" ;Voiceless fricative to voiced fricative * > or : "married" * > : "stand" * > : "easy" * > > : "beginning" * > : "live" * > > ∅: "past" Another optional process of Manx phonology is pre-occlusion, the insertion of a very short plosive consonant before a sonorant consonant. In Manx, this applies to stressed monosyllabic words (i.e. words one syllable long). The inserted consonant is homorganic with the following sonorant, which means it has the same place of articulation. Long vowels are often shortened before pre-occluded sounds. Examples include:Broderick 1984–86, 3:28–34; 1993, 236 * > : > "heavy" * > : > "head" * > : > "birds" * > : > "ship" * > : > "walking" The trill is realised as a one- or two-contact flap at the beginning of syllable, and as a stronger trill when preceded by another consonant in the same syllable. At the end of a syllable, can be pronounced either as a strong trill or, more frequently, as a weak fricative , which may vocalise to a nonsyllabic or disappear altogether.Broderick 1984–86; 3:17–18 This vocalisation may be due to the influence of Manx English, which is itself a non-rhotic accent.Jackson 1955, 118; Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1998, Isle of Man, retrieved 2008-09-28 Examples of the pronunciation of include: * "snare" * "bread" * "big" Vowels The vowel phonemes of Manx are as follows:Broderick 1993, 230–33 The status of and as separate phonemes is debatable, but is suggested by the allophony of certain words such as "is", "women", and so on. An alternative analysis is that Manx has the following system, where the vowels and have allophones ranging from through to . As with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, there is a large amount of vowel allophony, such as that of . This depends mainly on the 'broad' and 'slender' status of the neighbouring consonants: When stressed, is realised as .Broderick 1993, 232–33 Manx has a relatively large number of diphthongs, all of them falling: Stress Stress generally falls on the first syllable of a word in Manx, but in many cases, stress is attracted to a long vowel in the second syllable.Broderick 1993, 236 Examples include: * "sprite" * "busy" * "royal" * "advantage" References External links * Category:Language phonologies